This descriptive research aims to establish a picture of the main difficulties high school students face with regard to the spelling of homophones; this was achieved using several perspectives of analysis.
We started by emphasising the importance of spelling difficulties among Québec high school students and then outlined the proportion of those errors specifically attributable to the spelling of homophones. Using data gathered by Projet grammaire-écriture, a research group with the preliminary objective of gathering a significant amount of data using two means of collection (a dictation and a written production), we started by outlining the most frequent homophonous errors made by the students and then analysed each of the problematic homophonous forms using several criteria, such as their lexical frequency in the French language, their belonging to a particular grammatical category, or their underlying syntax structure. The most outstanding errors have been the subject of more advanced analysis: we have established the percentage of correct spelling versus wrong spelling in all of the students’ writings. And, finally, we have also compared our results with those obtained by McNicoll and Roy (1984), who surveyed students from primary schools.
The results of our analysis show that the main problems high school students face are verbs ending with the sound ‘e’, followed by the s’est/c’est/ces/ses and se/ce homophonous forms.